Stitching up clothes and cooking lunches for office workers, 200 women in the slums of Bombay have found a glimmer of independence through a project that offers them incomes and a break from the cycle of gender and caste discrimination.
"In India, women suffer the most. They rely first on their parents or their brothers and then their husbands," said Sister Isabel, a Spaniard who launched the Creative Handicraft project in 1984.
"When a couple only has girls as children, it's seen as a catastrophe: The husband leaves. I wanted to build something for those women."
The project, which runs eight cooperatives in the alleys of the Agashnagar slum, will showcase its work when it sells its food during the Jan. 16 to Jan. 21 World Social Forum, the annual convention of anti-globalization forces.
For the first World Social Forum outside Brazil, organizers chose Bombay whose high-rises house some of the world's top global firms but where around half of the 18 million-strong population lives in poverty.
Johny Joseph, secretary general of Creative Handicraft, said the project began as a way "to offer a salary to women so that they don't hesitate to send to school their children, who were spending the day begging."
Lydia Miami, an Asia officer of the Paris-based Catholic Committee Against Hunger and for Development which supports the project, stressed a key obstacle was the dowry system which permeates Indian society.
"In India, it's the woman and her family who have to pay dowry, but they don't always have the means. And that's why they get beaten," Miami said on a visit to the site.
Sitting on the ground with a dozen other women in brightly colored saris, Beula, 22, stitched a pillow cover to be sold through the project.
"My husband's job is unstable. For me it's good to have a permanent income," she said.
The work each month earns her around 1,300 rupees, or about US$28, a significant sum for a woman in a Bombay slum. In addition, she is granted another US$11 monthly for each of her children.
A few steps higher in the shantytown, other women prepare lunch. The project -- presumably like the customers at the World Social Forum -- does not discriminate against those who belong to Hinduism's lowest and poorest class, the Dalits
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS